RPA Seeks FRA View of Wolverine Incident

The Federal Railroad Administration has been asked to investigate an incident in which an Amtrak Wolverine Service train was delayed by more than 13 hours by a series of mechanical issues while en route.

The train had departed Pontiac, Michigan, in the Detroit suburbs at 5:43 a.m. on Oct. 7 but didn’t arrive in Chicago until just past midnight. The scheduled arrival time was 10:49 a.m.

The request for a review was made by the Rail Passengers Association, which called for the FRA to conduct a debriefing and critique session as required under federal regulations “after each passenger train emergency situation . . . to determine the effectiveness of its emergency preparedness plan.

RPA is seeking observer status in any such review, which the association noted must under federal law be held within 60 days.

The problems began with a locomotive failure on Train 351 about 20 miles west of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The consist of No. 351 was eventually combined with Wolverine Service train 353, which was following about two hours behind.

However, passengers riding Train 351 had no electricity, working toilets, food service or heat during much of their journey. Passengers told news media reporters that they received little information from Amtrak as to what was happening.

Contributing to those conditions were a series of cascading mechanical failures.

Some passengers decided to disembark near Gary, Indiana, after the original Amtrak crew ran afoul of the federal hours of service law and the train sat on a Norfolk Southern mainline awaiting a replacement crew to take the train into Chicago.

Those passengers opened doors, crossed active railroad tracks and walked through waist-high grass to a nearby highway where they summoned ride sharing services to take them to Chicago.

RPA head Jim Mathews said he has met with Amtrak management about the incident and said they recognize the seriousness of what occurred.

However, he said there remain many open questions about how the incident was handled, how alternate arrangements were considered, and how poorly passengers understood what was happening.

Amtrak to Restore Suspended Service on Oct. 3

Amtrak will restore fully daily service on Oct. 3 to long distance trains that are now operating five days a week.

The Rail Passengers Association reported on its website that the change affects the New York-New Orleans Crescent and the City of New Orleans between Chicago and New Orleans.

Also on Oct. 3, RPA, said the now suspended Silver Meteor will resume operation between New York and Miami.

In recent months the only service between New York and Miami has been the Silver Star, which follows a different route from the Meteor in North Carolina and South Carolina.

RPA also said some improvements in food service aboard trains might be rolled out this fall but no details on what those changes might entail are yet available.

Amtrak cited staffing shortages for reducing the frequency of most long-distance trains in January to five days a week.

Most of those service cuts have since been reversed and train operations have reverted to seven days a week.

The RPA report said Amtrak is now confident that it will have the staff and equipment needed to bring the rest of the trains back on to pre-pandemic schedules.

However, the RPA report did not say whether the service restorations includes reinstating service now suspended in the Chicago-Carbondale, Illinois, corridor.

Since January the State of Illinois supported service on that route has been only the northbound Saluki in the morning and the southbound Illini in late afternoon and evening.

RPA Says Amtrak Service is Deteriorating

Amtrak service in recent weeks has shown marked deterioration, the Rail Passengers Association said on its website last week.

RPA said on-time performance system-wide has declined due to freight train interference and slow orders.

Another factor has been mechanical breakdowns of Amtrak equipment that has delayed trains at their originating terminals and while en route.

The RPA post said that during March on-time performance fell to 21 percent. The Chicago-Washington Capitol Limited slipped to 19.9 percent while the New York-Miami Silver Star was at 16.9 percent and the New Orleans Sunset Limited at 17.8 percent.

RPA said its members have also complained about problems with the reservations system, particularly reaching Amtrak call centers.

Richards Elected Chair of RPA

Meredith Richards has been elected as chair of the Rail Passengers Association.

She is president of the Virginia Rail Policy Institute and previously served as president of Virginians for High Speed Rail.

The appointment was announced at RPA’s annual convention held last week in Washington. Richards will serve a two-year term.

In a news release, RPA said Richards wants to emphasize volunteer committees under RPA staff direction, improve communications with state passenger organizations, and continue to build on RPA’s diversity and inclusion efforts.

Elected to vice chair positions were Harvey Bowen of Washington, Thomas Girsch of Massachusetts, Bruce Ashton of Texas and Ken Joseph of Pennsylvania.

Cliff Dunn will remain as secretary and Ken Clifford will continue as treasurer.

RPA Solicits Support in Gulf Coast Case

A rail passenger advocacy group is seeking to rally its own supporters in advance of a hearing by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board regarding new Amtrak service along the Gulf Coast.

The Rail Passengers Association has created an online petition that counters in part a similar petition established by CSX for shippers to take the Class 1 railroad’s side in the case.

Amtrak brought the action against CSX and Norfolk Southern in a bid to get federal regulators to order the two railroads to host twice daily new service between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama.

Amtrak contends the host railroads have been unduly dragging their feet in the matter and demanding exorbitant capital projects to increase the capacity of the route to be used.

The RPA petition favors an STB order to restore intercity rail passenger service on a route that has been without it since August 2005 when the tri-weekly Sunset Limited was suspended in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

STB hearings in the Gulf Coast service case are set to be held on Feb. 15 and March 9.

RPA Fighting Amtrak Plans to Reduce Service

The Rail Passengers Association is launching a lobbying campaign to try to persuade Congress to approve the supplemental $1.475 billion in funding that Amtrak is seeking in fiscal year 2021 from Congress.

That money would be on top of the passenger carrier’s regular funding request for the FY2021.

The passenger advocacy group said that it will seek to prod Congress to approve the funding with statutory mandates that service continue to operate daily on routes where that is now the case.

A letter from Amtrak President William Flynn said that even with the supplemental appropriation all but one of Amtrak’s long-distance routes would be reduced to less than daily operation.

Without the supplemental funding, Flynn warned, all of the long-distance routes are “at risk,” which presumably means of being suspended or discontinued.

RPA is appealing to its members to contact members of Congress to demand daily service and to protect Amtrak’s workforce.

The carrier has said it expects to reduce its workforce by 20 percent.

Flynn’s letter has draw a sharp rebuke from Rep. Dan Lipinski, chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Railroads.

In a statement, Lipinski was particularly critical of Amtrak’s plans to cut its workforce.

The statement cited the $1 billion that Amtrak received from the CARES Act.

“It was my understanding that Amtrak did not plan to furlough any workers due to COVID-19,” Lipinski said.

RPA said Flynn’s letter left a number of unanswered questions including how Amtrak could restore service to pre-pandemic levels if one in five employees will be gone either through voluntary retirement or furlough.

Other unanswered questions are what level of less than daily service Amtrak envisions for its long-distance trains whether it would be every other day, five days a week or tri-weekly.

RPA is calling for Amtrak to explain how much the carrier expects to save with less than daily service, how much revenue would be lost and what threshold of ridership would trigger full restoration to daily service.

The rail passenger advocacy group said Congress should up the supplemental funding for Amtrak to at least $1.5 billion for a total of $3.54 billion in total funding on the condition that clear protections for passengers and workers imposed.

Amtrak Host Railroads Push Back on FRA OT Rule

Running a passenger train schedule between one station and another should seem like a straight forward process.

Take such factors as distance and maximum speed allowed over the length of the run to determine “pure running time.” Then factor in station dwell times. The result is a schedule.

In fact those are factors Amtrak has used to create its schedules.

But during a recent public hearing conducted by the Federal Railroad Administration over its proposed rule mandating on-time performance standards for passenger trains, Amtrak’s host railroads argued that schedule making it more complicated than that.

The host railroads want the FRA to require rather than suggest that Amtrak and its host railroads conduct periodic negotiations over schedules.

As the host railroads see it, current Amtrak schedules are not realistic because they were set years if not decades ago and conditions have changed since then.

Norfolk Southern told the FRA that Amtrak schedules need to account for “operating and market conditions affecting the railroad, including infrastructure capacity, traffic volumes, traffic mix, and maintenance needs.”

NS contends that Amtrak is unwilling to adjust schedules in response to these factors.

The proposed FRA standards would define a train as on-time at any given station if it arrives within 15 minutes of its published schedule although that would be weighted by the level of use that station typically sees.

A recent analysis of the issue published on the website of Trains magazine laid out some of the various factors in the on-time rule making dilemma.

If Amtrak and its host railroads were forced to negotiate new schedules, the process would likely become protracted as each sought to advance its own underlying agendas.

For the host railroads that is likely to include lengthening schedules rather than contracting them.

Railroads have a financial incentive to demand longer schedules. Amtrak pays them incentives to operate trains on time. It penalizes host railroads by withholding those payments if trains are late.

Typically, schedules include “recovery time” to enable a late train to get within its schedule at some point.

Recovery time tends to be placed toward the end of a route. You can find it by calculating the scheduled running time from the terminal, say Chicago, and the next station on a route.

It is not unusual for the scheduled running time into Chicago from that station to be twice what it is for trains leaving Chicago.

However, in some instances, recovery time is built in around specified en route check points.

Another sticky issue involves routes with multiple host railroads. If a train arrives late onto the tracks of railroad B because of delays incurred while on the tracks of railroad A, railroad B doesn’t want to be penalized for that.

Yet Amtrak’s host railroads argue that will occur if the proposed FRA standard is adopted.

In their comments to the FRA, some host railroads were critical of Amtrak for refusing to show them certain information including passenger boarding information at individual stations.

That is important information, railroads say, because the built-in dwell time at any given station needs to take into account how many passengers it typically handles.

Because passenger counts at any given station are subject to change, host railroads contend that the dwell time at some stations may be outdated given the passenger traffic there and thus not “reasonably achievable.”

Trains found after reviewing the testimony and written statements of the parties that participated in the FRA hearings that Amtrak’s host railroads generally favor a single measure rather than multiple definitions of when a train is late, depending on the length of the route traveled.

Amtrak’s host railroads through their trade group, the Association of American Railroads, challenged complex on-time definitions in court in previous litigation over a section of a federal law mandating the setting of on-time performance standards for passenger trains.

The Rail Passengers Association in its statement to the FRA expressed the fear that Amtrak’s host railroads are playing a long game of seeking to engage in endless litigation and regulatory proceedings in an effort to forestall on-time standards that are not to their liking.

Rail passenger advocates argue that if the host railroads get their way Amtrak schedules would be reset to be so slow that fewer people would want to take the train.

Passenger advocates also contend that without a mechanism in place to penalize Amtrak’s host railroads for their failure to dispatch trains on time there will be no incentive for the hosts to ensure passenger trains adhere to their schedules.

The Trains analysis noted there was widespread criticism by host railroads and passenger train advocates alike over Amtrak’s refusal to share operating information with the public.

This includes Amtrak’s Customer Satisfaction Index. Amtrak argues that information collected to calculate that index is proprietary.

The FRA is accepting public comments on its proposed rule through June 1.

Whatever it decides probably isn’t going to make everyone happy and it could even leave all parties somewhat to greatly dissatisfied.

Everyone involved in this matter has their own agenda and it’s probably inevitable that those agendas will conflict.

Each party wants someone else to give up something that is valuable to them that they are not willing to surrender no matter what “compensation” they may get in return if indeed there is anything to be gained by giving in.

AAR Says Amtrak Schedules Are Unrealistic

Amtrak’s host railroads appear poised to argue that keeping its trains on time is difficult because the schedules are difficult to meet.

During a recent hearing conducted by the Federal Railroad Administration, Ian Jefferies, CEO of the Association of American Railroads indicated that nearly all Amtrak schedules are unrealistic and it would be a mistake to promulgate on-time standards based upon them.

The FRA is considering setting on-time standards that host railroads would be expected to follow in dispatching passenger trains.

It is yet another in a decade-long legal battle over on-time performance standards that have involved AAR challenging in court a law approved by Congress directing the setting of such standards.

“The freights’ strategy is clear: Get FRA to require Amtrak to lengthen schedules even more, making passenger rail so trip-time uncompetitive that passenger rail dies in the United States,” said Jim Mathews, CEO of the Rail Passengers Association.

Mathews noted that several railroad executives spoke during the FRA hearings about hard hard it is to run a railroad and keep passenger trains on time.

Mathews also took issue with AAR’s assertion that Amtrak schedules have not been changed in decades, saying that many scheduled have been changed repeatedly.

“On time performance was much better before 2013 when Federal court action suspended performance metrics, leaving the freights with no consequences for running late trains,” Mathews said. “And it improved again when certain railroads had a bright public light put on them last year.”

He said that whether trains run on time is dependent upon consequences for host railroads when their dispatching decisions result in late trains.

The FRA is accepting public comment in the case through June 1.

Amtrak Stops Accepting Cash

The COVID-19 pandemic has had many effects, some of which have received little attention.

Among those has been Amtrak’s acceptance of a suggestion by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to business to limit the handling of cash, which it said can carry the virus.

The CDC has recommended that business promote tap and pay to limit the handling of cash.

The Rail Passengers Association said it has learned this week that Amtrak has begun refusing to take cash which the advocacy group said could leave those without credit cards with no options for paying for Amtrak services.

The RPA said it won’t fault Amtrak for adopting the policy, but said a workaround needs to be found.

“We at Rail Passengers right now don’t have an answer,” RPA CEO Jim Mathews  wrote on its website on Friday. “I’m raising the question as a challenge, however, that maybe all of us can come up with a solution.”

Budget Proposal Gets Little Reaction on Capitol Hill

A Trump administration proposal to more than halve Amtrak funding in federal fiscal year 2021 received a muted response on Capitol Hill.

The Rail Passengers Association wrote on its blog that congressional leaders in both parties are noting that there is a two-year budget agreement in effect and they expect that will guide the appropriations process.

“We’ve got the caps deal in place,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “We negotiated it last year. It’s good for the second year, and we’ll comply with that.”

Nonetheless, RPA is trying to activate its members to contact Congress in opposition to the Amtrak funding cuts.

The administration’s budget proposal calls for slashing Amtrak funding from the $2 billion appropriated for FY2020, which ends on Sept. 30, to $936 million.

The budget proposal would reduce funding for the Northeast Corridor from $700 million to $325 million.

Funding of the national network would fall from $1.3 million to $611 million.

The budget document calls for the elimination of Amtrak’s long-distance passengers trains over the next five years.

Specifically, that would be accomplished through implementation of a new grant program whose objective is to encourage state and local governments to fund Amtrak service in corridors of 100 to 500 miles.

The budget document gave few details about the grant program other than it would only last through FY2015.

However, the administration made clear that it sees no future for long-distance trains.

“Amtrak trains inadequately serve many rural markets while not serving many growing metropolitan areas at all,” the budget document said. “The Administration believes that restructuring the Amtrak system can result in better service at a lower cost, by focusing trains on better-performing routes, while providing robust intercity bus service connections.”

RPA said the proposed $550 million in National Network “transformational grants” appears to be designed to help Amtrak cover the costs of multi-year labor agreements and contracts.

The rail passenger advocacy group argues that those agreements in tandem with the lost revenue from the eliminated trains and lost connections will make ending Amtrak’s long-distance network an expensive proposition.

Last year the Trump administration proposed a similar funding program that would have given states money to implement intercity bus services in lieu of passenger trains.

That idea went nowhere in Congress and the long-distance network survived intact.

The FY2021 budget proposal promised to provide details at an unspecified later date as part of the administration’s proposal for renewing the surface transportation act that expires on Sept. 30.

That document will, presumably, also provide a more complete picture of what corridor services Amtrak and the U.S. Department of Transportation have in mind for funding with the federal transformation grants.

For more than a year Amtrak President Richard Anderson has talked up the concept of corridor services between urban centers, particularly in the South and West.

Anderson’s concept is to provide multiple daily frequencies on those routes.

In his public comments and congressional testimony, Anderson has said many cities served by long-distance routes are served poorly either through scheduling or lack of service frequency.

Amtrak executives have also in recent weeks visited state legislative transportation committee hearings to talk up the corridors concept.

An Amtrak public affairs manager spoke in Tennessee in favor of a new route between Nashville and Atlanta.

The same official also spoke in Kansas about an extension of the Heartland Flyer to the Sunflower State via Wichita.

In both instances, the Amtrak executive made clear that state and local governments will be expected to underwrite the operating losses of the routes.

During the Kansas hearing, the Amtrak executive referred to a yet to be enacted fund to help states fund new service.

The Trump administration budget proposal appears to be the framework for that fund.

Last year in response to questions raised during a congressional hearing Amtrak in a letter to senators declined to list the proposed corridors that it is studying, but indicated that it would continue to work with states that have expressed an interest in new Amtrak service.

Among the routes in states that have worked with Amtrak in recent years on service expansions are a route between Duluth, Minnesota, and the Twin Cities; an extension of Northeast Regional service to Bistol, Virginia; and a train between Chicago and the Twin Cities on the route of the Empire Builder.

There are no shortage of potential new Amtrak routes including some that have been discussed for years but failed to gain political traction.

That would include the 3C corridor in Ohio between Cleveland and Cincinnati via Columbus and Dayton.

Amtrak has never served that route, although it does provide service currently to Cleveland and Cincinnati with long-distance trains.

Columbus and Dayton lost Amtrak service on Oct. 1, 1979, with the discontinuance of the New York-Kansas City National Limited.

If Congress does, indeed, follow the budget deal reached last year, it seems likely that Amtrak’s services in the next fiscal year will be the same as those now operating.

Budget proposals are more policy statements and aspirational statements than they are blueprints.

The Trump administration is not the first to call for elimination of Amtrak’s long-distance passenger trains.

The real action is likely to be in the political wrangling over the surface transportation renewal bill and even action on that is not guaranteed despite the looming Sept. 30 expiration of the current FAST Act.

Congress might seek to extend the current FAST act through a continuing resolution just as it does the federal budget when it fails to reach agreement on a appropriations as the current fiscal year is coming to a close.